{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,9]],"date-time":"2026-06-09T07:28:16Z","timestamp":1780990096748,"version":"3.54.1"},"reference-count":0,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]],"date-time":"2024-12-11T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1733875200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,8]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>Whether referring to oceanic travel on board of ships or to movement in terra firma, framings of the \u201cmigratory rat\u201d formed a key epidemiological component of approaches to the Third Plague Pandemic (1894-1959) as the first pandemic to be understood as caused by a zoonotic disease. In this article, I examine the emergence and development of scientific framings of the migratory rat in the first, explosive years of the third plague pandemic in India (1896-1899). Examining publications and archival sources, I ask how this animal figure came to inform and transform epidemiological reasoning. Going beyond established approaches that have shown how the rat-plague relation was mobilised by colonial doctors to pathologise Indigenous lifeways, I argue that more complex and ambivalent processes were also set in motion by this figure. First, I show how the migratory rat became invested with attributes of invasiveness that assumed ontological qualities in colonial epidemiological reasoning. Second, comparing the migratory rat with the hitherto established \u201cstaggering rat,\u201d I argue that the former embodied new approaches to both space and time in epidemiology. Third, I show how Indigenous scientists came to mobilise this complex figure to contest colonial approaches to plague.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/jhmas\/jrae044","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,11,25]],"date-time":"2024-11-25T15:24:09Z","timestamp":1732548249000},"page":"396-412","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["A Rat\u2019s Progress: Plague and the \u201cMigratory Rat\u201d in British India, 1896-1899"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"80","author":[{"given":"Christos","family":"Lynteris","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of St Andrews , Scotland ,","place":["UK"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]]},"container-title":["Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/jhmas\/article-pdf\/80\/4\/396\/61052706\/jrae044.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"syndication"},{"URL":"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/jhmas\/article-pdf\/80\/4\/396\/61052706\/jrae044.pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,3]],"date-time":"2026-02-03T11:01:48Z","timestamp":1770116508000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/jhmas\/article\/80\/4\/396\/7921536"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]]},"references-count":0,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,8]]}},"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1093\/jhmas\/jrae044","relation":{},"ISSN":["0022-5045","1468-4373"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0022-5045","type":"print"},{"value":"1468-4373","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published-other":{"date-parts":[[2025,10]]},"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,11]]}}}